milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It's been said that when the Dark comes rising that six will turn it back. Notably, there aren't six around at the moment and so Mesaana is sitting at a table sipping a cup of very strong tea calmly. She does not look particularly like a Dark Lord since she's currently wearing a blue robe over her white nightdress. Her hair is a mess and she looks a touch grumpy.

Go on, tempt Fate. If you are really good at tempting, Fate just might screw you.

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Mesaana nodded politely to Angela. A calm sip of her tea as she studied her student's daughter. She was an easily used tool. Her crystalline voice as calm as ever.

"Greetings, Lady Angela."

"I have not seen you in a while. How are you?"

There's an air of fragileness about Angela. She's made herself vulnerable, told secrets, and it's as if her soul is raw and at the surface, though for all of that, she is cheerful.

But still, she is careful, and fearful, at her core.

Mesaana knew vulnerability when she saw it. It was time to exploit that.

"I am well enough. How are you, Lady Angela?"

"I'm all right. I'm just glad my family is back."

She sits down across from her, uncertainly. Her movements are cautious and small, played close to her body.

She should trust Lady Selae, who has helped her mother so very much.

Mesaana nods calmly and sips her tea. Icy blue eyes watching the girl carefully.

"It can be relieving, I know."

A pause.

"Would you like to say anything about it? Part of my role as a teacher is listening."

Angela folds her hands in her lap. She can act well-bred if the incentive is there.

"I told my mother something about my future. I am not sure it was the right thing to do."

Angela is a little afraid of Lady Selae. She knows she shouldn't be.

A small smile from Mesaana as she spoke in a comforting tone of voice, her delicate hands folded carefully in front of her.

"Do not worry, Lady Angela. The Mirrors of the Wheel make provisions for such things. You have not inexorably dissolved time itself or the like. It is not possible to do so in that way."

"It isn't? What do you mean by 'Mirrors of the Wheel'?"

Despite her comforting words, Angela's stomach is tight with nervousness.

Mesaana explained in her pedagogical tone, gesturing with her delicate hands all the while.

"The Mirrors of the Wheel are the worlds of if, the shades of what might have been, reflections of reality."

Pausing for a moment, she realized that it might not be satisfactory.

"They are the worlds where history took a different turn, where something was changed."

"What happens...what happens then, to the world that was changed? Will I know what's gone on?"

She leans forward a little, anxiously.

Mesaana thinks for a moment, gazing into her tea.

"The worlds all exist simultaneously, and there are... ways of finding out what might have been."

A careful pause.

"With a Portal Stone."

Angela licks her lips, as her mouth suddenly seems very dry. She's been so very frightened of how things will change when she goes back.

Yet still, she holds back from asking.

"What will happen to me?" she murmurs, then feels ashamed then. She feels so very selfish, when it is other people she should be concerned about.

Mesaana looks at her with a curious gaze.

"I imagine nothing. You may have changed the course of Lady Kim's reality, but you did not change yours, since you two are from separate timelines, and now distinctly different ones."

"Then Mom won't be...the same one?"

Angela is terribly confused--or maybe she isn't so very confused. Maybe she knows exactly what Lady Selae means.

And it's exactly as she feared.

Mesaana shakes her head, and explains in that dry pedagogical tone.

"No, the Lady Kim that you know here in the bar will go on to become someone distinctly different than the one that you know outside. Since you altered the course of Angela in the Lady Kim you know here's worldline, it inevitably changed her."

A pause, and an indifferent shrug.

"It is the natural result of mucking about with continuities. Not to say, it would not be possible for you to learn what you did."

Angela lets out a shaky breath. "I knew I should have kept my mouth shut," she whispers.

Mesaana shrugged her shoulders.

"What you did was neither right nor wrong, it was simply a choice."

A pause, and another explanation.

"You changed the worldline... It is you call whether that was for good or for ill, though in reality it is impossible to know how it effects the grand scheme. A butterfly flaps its wings and on the other side of the world a mountain collapses."

Angela nods. Stupid, stupid.

"Yes, I've heard of that," she says faintly.

Of course she has. Angela is a science fiction geek. She's read stories about time-travel, chaos theory, all sorts of things that can screw up one's life if one meddles with them.

How could I be so stupid?

Mesaana nods calmly. This was going remarkably well, actually. Much better than she had thought.

"I thought you might."

A pause as she watches Angela carefully.

"You seem upset..."

"I should not have said anything," she says, shaking her head.

And she'd been doing so well, too. Why hadn't she waited till she was out of the bar before she said anything?

Mesaana considered for a moment.

"No, I do not suppose that there is much to do, but make the best of it."

A shrug.

"Once the goral has been thrown, it cannot be recalled."

"Goral?" she asks faintly.

She can guess what the phrase means in context, but Angela's mind is not quite all there right now.

Mesaana's brow furrowed slightly as she thought.

"It is... well, I am not sure of an analogue, but it suffices to say that the idiom is for something once done that cannot be taken back."

Angela nods.

She doesn't know what to do.

And now she really has no one to speak with about this.

Her hands begin to clench in her lap.

Mesaana tilts her head to the side as she watches Angela. A note of quiet concern.

"What is wrong, Child?"